


Family Blues

by ginger_mosaic



Series: The Guinea Pig 'Verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Domestic Hunters, Episode: s10e09 The Things We Left Behind, Episode: s10e10 The Hunter Games, Episode: s10e20 Angel Heart, Family Drama, Gen, Implied Crowley/Dean Winchester, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Mentions of Past Underage Prostitution, POV Castiel, POV Dean Winchester, Past Crowley/Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s10e09 The Things We Left Behind, Post-Episode: s10e10 The Hunter Games, Post-Episode: s10e20 Angel Heart, Post-Season/Series 10, Unrequited Crowley/Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 18:29:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11087457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_mosaic/pseuds/ginger_mosaic
Summary: “She doesn’t need a friend. She needs a father.” Well, Castiel is trying. But maybe he’s trying too hard.





	Family Blues

 

When Dean gets back to the bunker, it seems like things have only gotten worse. He opens the door, and when raised voices float up the stairs from the library, he nearly turns right back around to eat the damn pizzas in the Impala. Maybe he’ll text Sam to join him so at least he can save his brother.

Instead, he closes the bunker door loudly and shouts down, “Pizza’s here!”

The raised voices cut off abruptly. Dean hears Cas’s low rumble, and then he appears in the archway, shoulders raised in a tense line. When Dean reaches the bottom of the stairs, Cas takes the pizza boxes from him and reaches for the grocery bag he’s carrying, too, but Dean pulls it out of reach.

“I gotta put this in the kitchen,” he says, and he glances over Cas’s shoulder toward the library. “Everything okay in there?”

Cas huffs. “Claire believes that school is a waste of time and that we should allow her to hunt.”

“Tell her our roof, our rules.”

“She won’t listen to me.”

“Maybe she’ll listen to Sam,” says Dean, shrugging and starting toward the kitchen. “I dunno why they even get along, though. Did Sam gasp and faint when she said school is a waste? I hope you got it on video.”

“ _Dean_.”

But Dean is already halfway to escaping to the kitchen, even though it probably makes him a coward. But he’s still coping with a lot of shit; he figures he deserves this one small reprieve.

Things have been tense in the last two weeks, ever since Claire called them from a bus station in Hastings.

“Alex is a crappy roommate,” Claire had declared when all three of them arrived at the station to stare at her in shock. “But I figured you guys probably have extra rooms in your secret base or whatever.”

Dean had gaped at her, but he managed to say, “Yeah, sure,” and when they all got back to the bunker, he called Jody.

“Oh, thank God,” Jody had said, and then there was the heavy, muted thump of her falling into her couch. “She’s been missing for two days. I was ready to send out a search party. She usually checks in when she goes out on hunts—”

“She’s _hunting_?”

“Hey, I’ve tried to stop her, but she’s almost as stubborn as you and Sam,” said Jody, somewhat defensively. “I keep trying to get her to go to school or get her GED or just volunteer at the station, but I swear, it’s like trying to herd a cat.”

Dean had sworn and rubbed his hand over his face, and after a long conference call in the war room, with minimal input from Claire aside from the occasional, “I just want my own room,” they all agreed that Claire could stay with them, on the condition that she attend her senior year of high school.

“I’m eighteen!” Claire had argued vehemently. “I’m too old for high school now!”

“We could fudge your papers,” Sam mused.

“Nope, vetoed,” said Jody. “Do it legally. I half-convinced a school here to take her before she skipped town. You guys are cons, I’m sure you can get her enrolled somewhere.”

Claire had screamed out a groan the way teenaged girls in movies always did. Dean hoped she didn’t make a habit out of that.

They agreed to call around to schools anyway, but they still needed a cover story to do so as her guardians, even though she was already eighteen.

“Well, Claire was in the system for a while anyway,” said Sam slowly, and when he glanced at Dean, he knew this couldn’t be good. “What if Dean and Cas adopted her, like as a foster child or something?”

Dean felt a flush rise, and Claire sputtered incoherently, but Sam continued.

“Yeah, like, Cas could be Jimmy’s long-lost brother or something, and they tracked down Claire and adopted her,” he said.

“Sam, me and Cas can’t _adopt_ Claire,” Dean had hissed, still blushing furiously. The… thing with Cas was new, and everybody knew already, but _Jesus._ “First of all, only _married_ people are allowed to adopt.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “You guys have been married for _years_ ,” he said. Jody snorted her agreement. Claire sputtered out more incoherent protests. Dean refused to look at Cas.

But that’s how it happened that Cas took a last name—Singer, in honor of Bobby, which made Jody sniffle a little—for the purposes of paperwork and then they got fake gay-married and adopted Claire as a foster child as of a year ago, all with Charlie’s help. Apparently, Dean had been married for a year and he didn’t even know it. Go figure.

“Doesn’t that mean you married a Knight of Hell?” Dean asked Cas later in Dean’s room—their room, now—after they had helped Claire settle in and she’d slammed the door in their faces. Cas had just rolled his eyes and kissed him, because he was allowed to do that now: kiss Dean to shut him up. They’d had a lot fewer shouting matches since that became a thing. (Fewer, not none. Maybe Sam was right about them bickering like an old married couple, though Dean would never tell him so.)

After a half-dozen calls, they found a high school that would take her. It was an hour away from the bunker, and they all needed to interview first, but it was something. Now they just had to convince Claire to actually _go_.

And by the sound of things when Dean walked in, doing so wasn’t going well.

He can only stall for so long in the kitchen, putting everything away and rearranging the spice cupboard while he’s at it, and hey, somebody left the dishes undone—

“Hey, Dean, grab me a beer!” Sam shouts, and Dean can tell from his tone that he’s calling him out on stalling. _Get your ass in here_ , that tone says.

Also, maybe: _Don’t you fucking dare leave me in here with this._

Dean shuts the cupboard and grabs three beers from the fridge and a can of iced tea for Claire and heads into the war zone.

When he walks back into the war room, where they’ve all migrated, the stack of pizza boxes is in the exact center of the table and Sam, Cas, and Claire are all sitting as far apart as possible. He pauses in the doorway and takes in the tense atmosphere. No matter which seat he chooses, he’ll be breaking the delicate balance of space they’ve got going on here. He should probably sit next to Cas, but then it’s a matter of which side of Cas. Does he sit between Cas and Claire and take the brunt of her scowl, or does he sit between Cas and Sam and exchange glances with his brother throughout what is sure to be a tense dinner?

He glances at Claire, who has her arms crossed and a steady blue glare fixed on Cas, and shudders. Yeah, okay, he’ll just have to make it up to Cas later.

He drops into a chair and slides everyone’s drinks across the surface of the gigantic war room table. No one has moved to take pizza, and Dean can feel an argument brewing, but there’s no way he’s participating on an empty stomach. He opens the top pizza box and slides a slice of meat lover’s onto one of the paper plates.

“Heard anything from Crowley?” Dean asks Sam, in an attempt to break the tension and redirect tonight’s conversation. Everybody just needs to cool down, and they can revisit the school thing later.

Sam gives him a knowing look and reaches for the pizza, which prompts everyone else to join in at last. “Nothing. Pretty sure our impasse is still an impasse. You’re his favorite, he’d probably talk to you if you’d just—”

Dean waves a hand to cut him off. “Not happening.” Crowley had practically thrown a fit over Death’s box and what to do with it, since the Darkness would inevitably break out, and it only got worse when they all met up again a few weeks later—the same number of weeks after Cas kissed Dean and Dean let him. Hell hath no fury like a King of Hell scorned. So yeah, Dean’s not going to touch _that_ with a twenty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole. Every time he’s tried to negotiate with Crowley, the demon always makes it nasty and personal. They probably won’t get much help from him. And Rowena had vanished with the Book of the Damned, which is just _great_ because they probably need it to figure out what to do about the Darkness. Dean should have killed them both when he had the chance.

“What about jobs?” Dean asks instead, and shrugs at Sam’s raised eyebrow. “Might as well keep busy. World’s still turning.”

“I found one,” says Claire over her pizza, cracking her can of iced tea open with one hand.

“Claire,” says Cas through gritted teeth. Oh, great.

Claire ignores him. “I’ll tell you about it if you take me with you.”

“Yeah, but you’re not hunting,” says Dean.

“I hunted in Sioux Falls. Alone, even.”

“Which was damned stupid of you,” Dean points out.

She shrugs. “So I’ll just hunt with you guys now.”

“You aren’t going to hunt, Claire,” says Cas warningly. “You’re going to school.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, _Castiel_ ,” she spits at him, using his full name like a curse. “I’m an adult.”

“As long as you’re living here, you’ll—”

“Oh my _God_!” Claire shouts, angry and incredulous. “Seriously? You’re not my dad, Castiel!”

“ _You think I don’t fucking know that, Claire?_ ”

Claire only blinks, her eyes wide and furious, but she’s clearly taken aback. Cas is standing now, his chair shoved back roughly enough that it hits the wall behind him with a smack. Sam’s hands are braced on top of the table, as though he’s afraid Cas is going to flip it. And he probably could; dude’s strong. But Cas’s hands are clenched into fists at his sides and he’s leaning forward a little, looming over the table, his back ramrod straight.

“I would do _anything_ ,” says Cas, his voice low and gravel-rough and full of angelic rage, “to take back what I did to you and your family. If I could take another vessel, instead of standing before you every day wearing your father’s face, I—” He bites off the rest of that thought, his jaw clenching shut. He looks away, rolling his jaw, and then he shakes his head, and when he looks back at Claire again, his blue eyes are two determined, angry former-angel beams. “I wouldn’t,” he grinds out, “because I _refuse_ to do this to another family. I’m _sorry_ , Claire,” he says, his voice cracking. “I am _trying_ to fix it.”

Claire just glares at him, her jaw clenched in the same way. “Well,” she bites out, “you can’t.”

“Claire—”

“You can’t!” she screeches, standing up, too. “Just stop trying!”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Cas shouts back. “If you _hate_ me so much, then why are you here?”

It’s a step too far. Claire, so animated by anger before, freezes, and Cas sees it. His eyes widen minutely, and he looks away again, and then, before any of them can even move, he turns and sweeps out of the war room.

Claire glares after him for a moment, and then she huffs, turns on her heel, and stomps in the opposite direction.

Dean waits until he hears two doors slam shut, and then he turns to Sam. “Okay, what the fuck happened?”

Sam sighs and shakes his shaggy head. “They were just arguing about school,” he says. “Claire really doesn’t want to go.”

“Well, can’t blame her there,” says Dean, grabbing his beer and standing up. “Not sure why Cas is so dead set on it, to be honest.” He takes a swig of beer. “Divide and conquer?”

Sam nods and pushes to his feet, too. “I’ll take Claire. But she might just need some space,” he adds, loading up her abandoned plate with pizza. He shoves her tea into the crook of his arm and grabs his own beer, and then walks out after Claire, deeper into the bunker.

Dean sighs and takes another long drink to steel himself before leaving the empty bottle behind. Time for some damage control.

 

* * *

 

When Castiel was brought back after Raphael killed him in the prophet Chuck Shurley’s home, he came back with a deep sense of emptiness. It took him a few minutes to realize that Jimmy Novak was gone. When this vessel was destroyed—when Jimmy’s body was destroyed—the human soul’s link to it was severed. He was killed and ascended to Heaven, leaving Castiel alone in his vessel, a body that had been rebuilt purely to house him now.

It took him a few minutes more to realize he was weeping.

The space Jimmy had occupied was vacant, a chasm inside the vessel that somehow ached, and Castiel hadn’t understood why. It was only years later that Castiel realized he missed him. He missed Jimmy, like a lost brother.

Jimmy was good. Castiel hadn’t paid enough attention back then, but he knew that.

He thinks, maybe, now that he knows better, he might have asked Jimmy for guidance. Maybe if he’d had Jimmy, he would not have made so many terrible mistakes. Then again, maybe that’s what helped him gain his free will after everything. The proverbial training wheels were off; after Jimmy was gone, he had to develop a human sense of freedom and morality by himself. Though that’s probably also why he failed so terribly at it so many times.

He doesn’t know what to do. And Jimmy is no longer there to guide him. Or Claire.

What should he do?

The bedroom door opens, but Castiel doesn’t lift his head from his hands. Dean steps in and closes the door, pausing in front of it, and after a moment of hesitation, he sighs and starts forward.

“Cas—”

Quite suddenly, Castiel realizes he doesn’t want to talk about it. Maybe it’s the hesitation in Dean’s tone or the humiliation over his outburst boiling under his borrowed skin, but he doesn’t want to talk. He’ll do anything, but not that.

Castiel surges to his feet before Dean can take another step and pushes Dean back against the door and kisses him. Dean, too, prefers action over words. He’ll let Castiel do this, to avoid any possible “chick flick moments.”

And he does, for a while. Dean kisses him back, but he’s not keeping up, so Castiel presses up against him to entice him to lose himself in this. Dean turns his head.

“Cas,” he says, moving again when Castiel chases his mouth. “Cas, come on. We gotta talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Castiel growls. Dean doesn’t get it; it’s useless to talk about this. Castiel made a mistake. He fucked up. He just has to fix it. “I don’t want to _talk_. I want to put your penis in my mouth.”

And with that, he drops to his knees. Dean inhales sharply and puts a hand on top of Castiel’s head, his fingers curling into his hair briefly, and Castiel gets as far as opening his fly before Dean is reaching down to grab him by the shoulders.

“Yeah, okay, no,” says Dean, hauling Castiel to his feet, and Castiel doesn’t understand. Dean _never_ refuses oral sex. True, he has expressed discomfort with Castiel kneeling before him, but Castiel doesn’t mind. It makes Dean feel good, and he likes making Dean feel good. It’s very satisfying to be able to do that for him, after all the awful things Castiel has done.

Dean holds him at arm’s length, frowning. His eyes flick back and forth across Castiel’s face, and he must see something because his expression softens. Wordlessly, he steers Castiel by the shoulders and sits him back down on the bed and then sits down next to him.

“Okay, look,” Dean starts, but then he sighs and rubs his eyes with his fingers. “I don’t even know what’s going on with you. You… you always do this.”

Castiel frowns. “Do what?”

Dean gestures vaguely. “You know. Bottle shit up. You never… You always try to do stuff on your own, and I feel like I never know what you’re thinking until shit blows up.”

Castiel bristles. “That’s a rather hypocritical thing for you to say.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “This isn’t about me, but sure. And you guys always eventually get it outta me. Cas, you… You don’t gotta do things alone. So talk to me. That outburst didn’t come outta nowhere. What’s going on with you?”

Castiel looks away, down to where his hands rest, open and useless, in his lap. Jimmy’s hands, Jimmy’s lap. It’s been years since the empty space ached, but he thinks he can feel it again now. This has been his vessel, his _body_ , for so long, ever since God remade it just for him, and he hasn’t hated it this much since the first time he was physically ill with something Sam called “the stomach flu.” The fucking _stomach flu_. He had stolen this body and now that he was Fallen, officially, willingly, without his Grace, it was his. His enough that he could become sick by a human virus.

It is his body.

But to Claire, it is her father’s.

Dean reaches over and takes one of his hands, leaving them clasped together in Castiel’s lap. “Talk to me, Cas,” he says, quietly.

“I feel guilty,” he says, finally, and it comes out coarsely and over a strange intangible object in his throat. “Because I took Claire’s father from her and ruined her life. The Novaks were happy, Dean. Jimmy and Amelia were soulmates. And now, every day, she has to—Claire sees me and—”

It’s getting harder to breathe, and Castiel takes a deep breath through his nose, but it makes a strange noise and seems to be blocked. He reaches up to pinch his nose to see if it’s bleeding and stop it, and his thumb brushes the inside corner of his eye and comes away wet. He pulls his hand back, puzzled, but it’s only water. He touches his face again, on his cheek just below his eye and brushes more water onto his fingers and stares at it.

“I don’t,” he starts and tries to breathe through his nose again and only manages to suck the blockage further up. “I don’t understand.”

“They’re tears, man,” says Dean, and suddenly there’s a travel pack of tissues in front of him. Castiel looks up from the pack to Dean, who smiles kindly. “It’s okay. It happens.”

Castiel takes the tissues, unlinking their hands, and glowers at him. “I know what they are, Dean,” he snaps. “I’ve cried before.”

Dean blinks, taken aback. “Really? When?”

He sniffs and thinks for a moment. “In the hospital. Meg held my hand, too. A few times after Metatron stole my grace. When you… When Sam told me about how you…”

Dean grimaces. “Sorry,” he says.

Castiel shrugs. He'd also cried after he Fell, but he isn't going to tell Dean that. He fishes a tissue out of the plastic and wipes his face, and then, remembering his time with the flu, uses a second tissue to blow his nose.

“I just don’t understand,” Castiel tries to explain, “why I’m crying _now_. Nothing terrible has happened. I just…” But he doesn’t know. In many, many ways, human behavior is strange to him. There’s always something new he doesn’t understand. Even as he learns one thing and grows accustomed to it, like urination, something else inevitably pops up that is alien to him. Like when Sam and Dean took him to the mountains for a case a few weeks ago and Castiel didn’t understand why his ears hurt so much until he complained about it and they explained about “popping your ears.” He’d felt foolish, because he knew about the difference in air pressure at different elevations, but he hadn’t known how it affected human bodies.

“People cry when they’re upset,” says Dean, shifting a little. “And you’re upset, so…”

Castiel blows his nose again. He’s creating quite the collection of used tissues in his lap. “How do I make it stop?”

“I dunno.” Dean sounds regretful, and Castiel looks up from his nest of tissues. Dean smiles sadly at him and then lifts his arm a little. “C’mere.”

Castiel leans to the side, and Dean moves his arm around him to let Castiel rest his head on his shoulder. It’s comforting, somehow, to be held like this. Maybe it’s that he can smell Dean, leather and smoke. It’s definitely one of the better things about being human.

“This has been bothering you since Claire moved in, huh?” says Dean into his hair after a while.

“Longer,” Castiel croaks. “When Hannah gave up her vessel, it reminded me. After I found Claire and she went to Jody's, I thought we were okay, because when we were just texting, it seemed that… but now that Claire is here, I can see that I was wrong. I hurt her. And I continue to hurt her simply by being here.”

Dean’s thumb rubs slow circles on Castiel’s waist, and after a few minutes of silence, he sighs. “You gotta talk to her, man.”

Castiel remembers the weight of Claire’s hate-filled glare and stiffens. “Claire does not want to talk to me.”

“Well, tough shit. Sam’s probably telling her the same thing. You two gotta hash this out. You’re being kinda mean to each other.”

Castiel winces. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he mutters, miserably. “I… like having her here. Having her close. Safe.”

“I know,” says Dean. He picks up Castiel’s hand where it rests on Dean’s thigh and holds it again. “You gotta talk it out. You guys have a lot to work through, you know? Like, we do, too, but—”

Castiel sits up, moving away a little and frowning. “What do you mean?”

Dean grimaces. “I don’t—It’s not—Look, man, sometimes I’m still pissed at you about Purgatory, okay?” He huffs out a dissatisfied breath through his nose. “If you’da just told me that you were gonna ditch—that you were gonna stay behind because you felt like you needed to do penance or whatever, I wouldn’ta—I mean, I would’ve still been pissed, but I would have understood what happened, you know?”

Castiel looks away. “I… didn’t want to burden you with…”

“Well, too fucking bad,” says Dean fiercely. “Damn it, Cas, if we’re doing this—this thing with us—then you gotta keep me in the loop. That’s how this has to work. And same with Claire,” he adds. “You wanna be like family to her and be there for her or whatever, you gotta… you gotta _communicate_ that, man.”

“I don’t know _how_ , Dean,” he grits out. He doesn’t have the words for this, for how he's feeling or what he wants. Not until it’s too late. Not until it all _blows up_.

But Castiel has been _trying_ , and he doesn’t know how to get through to Claire.

Dean sighs. “Do you want me to talk to her first? See where her head’s at?”

Castiel frowns. “You?”

“Yeah. You know, one extremely messed up human to another,” he says, and Castiel looks away sheepishly, but it appears Dean is letting it go, because then he adds, “Not that she likes me much either."

That’s not true, Castiel thinks. Claire is very angry with the both of them, and even though the Mark is gone, she is still a little cautious around Dean, but they get along. They snipe at each other and tease each other, and Castiel can tell they both enjoy the banter. It’s almost like a game; they are testing boundaries.

Castiel isn’t very good at the game.

But Dean and Claire understand each other in a way that Castiel envies. It started after Castiel and Sam left them alone in the motel during the search for Claire’s mother, and no matter how many texts he’s exchanged with Claire, Castiel’s interactions with her never seem as easy and natural as Dean’s. He can’t connect with her like Dean can. He doesn’t understand her at all, despite having spent a few minutes inside her head years ago.

“I’ll talk to her,” Dean decides, patting Castiel’s shoulder twice. He stands up, hand still on his shoulder, and looks down at Castiel. “Okay?”

Castiel nods slowly. “Okay.”

Dean nods once, hesitates, and then leans down and tips Castiel’s head up for a kiss, his palm gentle on Castiel’s jaw. Castiel reaches up and places a hand on Dean’s hip, and he tries not to grip too tightly because he knows Dean now has a task to complete, knows he isn’t leaving for long, but when Dean closes the door behind him, Castiel still feels that emptiness.

 

* * *

 

Sam is back in the war room, finishing off the pizza, when Dean comes back out. He tells Dean that Claire didn’t want to talk and that she’d taken her pizza and tea to her room.

“How’s Cas?” asks Sam.

Dean stalls by stuffing his mouth with a slice of pizza. “I told him he’s gotta have a talk with her.”

“Not sure that’s gonna go over well,” says Sam.

“He’s real messed up over this shit, though.” Dean runs a hand through his hair. “And you remember how she was before she left for Jody’s. They were good. And now they’re at each other throats all the time—like, what is going on?”

“He didn’t say anything?”

“He mentioned Jimmy,” Dean mutters, and Sam grimaces. “I’m gonna go talk to Claire.”

“Don’t take it personally if she slams the door in your face,” Sam advises, and Dean stops by the kitchen for one of the shopping bags he left out before heading to Claire’s room. He takes a deep breath, clenches a fist around the plastic handles of the bag, making it crinkle loudly in the hallway, and knocks on her door.

“Claire?” he calls.

“What?” she shouts, her voice muffled by the door. She sounds irritated, but Dean thinks it’s a good sign she responded at all. When Sam was pissed as a teenager, he gave them the silent treatment. Or just ran away. But she’s in the room she claimed, so…

Dean reaches for the doorknob, then reconsiders. “It okay if I come in?”

She groans. “Whatever.” There’s a thunk, and he waits, but she doesn’t move to open the door, so he turns the knob. Claire is sitting on the edge of her bed, a book discarded at her feet. She crosses her arms and glowers at him.

“I don’t want to talk,” she snarls, despite all evidence to the contrary, but Dean spent enough time raising one teenager to know not to push.

“I got something for you,” he says, lifting the grocery bag a little and slowly closing the door behind himself. Claire raises an eyebrow, and he steps further into the room to hand the bag to her. She takes it and when she looks into the bag, both of her eyebrows rise.

She looks up at Dean dubiously. “Chocolate?”

Dean shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “I thought, uh… You know. You’ve been kinda grumpy last coupla days…”

Clarie scowls at him. “I am _not_ angry just because I’m on my _period_ ,” she snarls.

Dean raises his hands in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, that’s not—I just—Even if you are, that’s a perfectly legitimate reason to be pissed off all on its own. That shit sucks.”

The scowl retreats into a frown, and Claire looks down at the assortment of chocolate bars in her lap. He didn’t know what she likes, so he got some dark chocolate, a Hershey’s, and even splurged on a Toblerone for her. The cashier had raised an eyebrow at him.

“Uh oh,” she’d said. “What’d you do?”

“That’s rather progressive of you,” Claire mutters, still looking down at the chocolate.

“Well, Lisa chewed me out once,” says Dean, shrugging again. “Probably never going to forget _that_ lecture. But you got other legitimate reasons to hate us.”

“I don’t… _hate_ you,” she mumbles, twisting the bag straps in her fingers.

“But you have reason to,” says Dean, coming over to sit next to her on the bed, figuring it’s safe now. She doesn’t argue with him, and he sighs. “Look, Claire… What Cas said… He didn’t mean—”

“I came here because I couldn’t stand living with Jody,” Claire says suddenly, still worrying the bag. Dean’s heart drops, in defense of Jody, and Claire finally meets his eyes again. She must see something in his face, because she looks away guiltily. “I mean—Jody’s great, really, but I couldn’t… She and Alex just had this thing, and she’s such a _mom_ , and I don’t…” She sighs and bites her lip. Claire is quiet for a while, just staring down at the chocolate in her lap. Finally, she shakes her head. “There was no room for me there,” she says. “I didn’t… I don’t belong there.”

Dean frowns. “What are you talking about?” he says. “Of course you do. Jody likes you.”

She bites her lip. “They were happy. Before I got there. And I just… I couldn’t stand it. I don’t—I don’t deserve—”

She breaks off and bows her head, and Dean remembers what Cas said, all those years ago.

_You don’t think you deserve to be saved._

“Of course you do, Claire,” he says. “You’re not—you’re a victim in this, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Her hair hides her face, so when she speaks, he can’t see her. “Yes I have,” she whispers. “I’ve done bad things. Things my parents—” Suddenly, she pitches forward, hiding her face in her hands. “God,” she says, her voice breaking.

“Claire,” says Dean, “it’s not your fault. What… Randy made you do, it’s not—”

“No,” she says hoarsely. “Before Randy. I did… other things. Bad things.”

Dean watches her shoulders jerk as she tries to hold in sobs. “What… What bad things?” he asks, carefully, but Claire only sobs harder and shakes her head. His mind races as he tries to make sense of this. She never killed anyone—her reluctance to actually have Dean taken out in the end was proof enough of that—and he already knew about the stealing, so what could—

Oh.

_Oh._

“Oh,” he says numbly.

Then, mouth dry, he says, “Me too.”

Claire freezes. He quickly looks down at his hands on his lap. They’re shaking, and he curls them into fists. He can feel Claire’s shocked gaze on him, and he utterly fails to fight the heat rising in his face.

“You…  too?” she says.

Dean presses his lips together and forces himself to nod, shame churning his gut. “Sometimes,” he says, just as hoarsely as Claire had, like the words are dragging their claws as he pulls them out through his throat. He swallows. “Sometimes Dad would take off,” he says, “and he wouldn’t leave enough money. So I… Sam was hungry, so I’d…”

He can’t. He can’t say it. There’s enough doubt that he could deny it, claim plausible deniability. Saying it out loud makes it real.

Dean swallows again and forces himself to meet Claire’s wide blue eyes. “It doesn’t make you bad, Claire,” he tells her. It’s the other things that make _him_ bad, things she’s never done and, if he can help it, never will do. He looks away again and picks at the seam of his jeans. “Desperate, maybe,” he says. “But not bad.”

She just stares at him, and her eyes are so much like Cas’s that he gets it. It’s so hard to look in those eyes and admit this. He can’t regret it, because it saved them from starvation a couple of times, but it doesn’t feel good. He wasn’t lying to Cas when he said the entire industry runs on absent fathers.

“But you did it for Sam,” says Claire at last, her brows knitting together, and she sniffles and looks away again. “I only ever did it for myself.”

“You did it to _survive_ ,” he says firmly. “You shouldn’t have had to—That’s on us, Claire.”

She looks up again, her eyes sad and wide. “Does Cas know?”

Dean shifts. “We’ve never talked about it,” he says, because he’s not sure what Cas was privy to about his history. He could have picked it up out of his mind at some point, way back when.

Claire nods and bites her lip. “What about Sam?”

“No,” he says sharply, and Claire flinches, so he tries again. “He can never know,” he says more softly. He and Sam had promised each other no more lies and no more secrets, but this? This is a secret he’s going to keep.

He turns to Claire and forces a smile. “It’ll be our little secret, okay?”

She smiles sadly back at him and nods. “Okay.”

He moves his arm around her back, and she leans in, so he completes the embrace, tugging her closer. Claire rests her head on his chest and sniffles, and they sit there together silently for a while. Dean rests his cheek on top of her head and tries not to think.

“You know we want you here, right?” Dean says at last. Claire sniffles and tightens her grip on his shirt. “I mean it, Claire. All of us. We fucked up and we wanna do right by you, sure, but besides that, we like you. Okay?”

Claire sniffs once more. “Okay.”

“You gotta talk to Cas.”

He’s ready to counter any protests, but Claire just sighs.

“Yeah,” she says. “I can’t face him right now though.”

“Sleep on it,” he says, pulling back and standing up. He looks down at her and raises his eyebrows. “You good?”

She nods. “Yeah. Thanks for the chocolate,” she adds, lifting the bag. Dean nods and starts toward the door, but before he can open it, Claire calls after him.

“Dean.”

He turns to see her biting her lip and watching him apprehensively.

“It doesn’t make you bad either,” she says.

He huffs out a humorless laugh. “Good night, Claire.”

“Night.”

Dean closes the door and leans against it briefly, sighing. Fuck. That was…

Fuck.

When he gets back to his room, Cas is sitting up against the headboard, reading a paperback. He looks up, but Dean avoids his eyes as he goes around to his side, crawls underneath the covers, and burrows into Cas’s side.

“Dean?” asks Cas.

“That blow job still on the table?” Dean jokes weakly, his voice muffled by the blankets.

Cas sets his book down and slides down to lay even with Dean. He turns on his side and then reaches out to place a hand on Dean’s face, stroking his cheekbone with a thumb.

“What happened?” asks Cas sternly. “What did she say?”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “No, it’s—she’s good. We just… talked about stuff that… brought up some old shit I hadn’t thought about in a while. It’s okay. Talk to her tomorrow, all right? She seems open to it.”

“Dean.”

Dean breathes out shakily.

“Dean, look at me.”

“You gonna talk to her?”

“Yes. Open your eyes.”

Dean takes a deep breath and does, and he’s immediately assaulted with Cas’s impossibly blue eyes and he can’t—he can’t—

Cas searches his face, and then he leans closer and kisses Dean, and it’s a relief because it means he can close his eyes again and not have to face that gaze that knows everything and nothing at all.

God, how must it be to have to look in a mirror image of your own eyes and with a secret like that?

Cas pulls away, still stroking Dean’s cheek, and rests their foreheads together. Dean squeezes his wrist briefly and then self-consciously lets go, unsure of when he’d grabbed Cas so tightly. Cas shifts again, wrapping Dean in his arms and pulling him closer until they’re curled around each other, their legs tangled together.

“Would you still like that blow job?” Cas whispers, his lips brushing Dean’s forehead.

Dean releases a heavy breath, rubbing his hand up Cas’s side. “No. No, this… This is fine.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was going to stay behind in Purgatory,” says Cas.

Dean frowns. “What?”

“You were right. I… bottle things up until they explode. And you are usually caught in the crossfire.”

“Cas…”

“I will endeavor to do better in the future, so as not to cause you harm.” Cas kisses his forehead. “Thank you for talking to Claire.”

Dean never thought he’d be a mediator, but here they are, he guesses. They’re in this together. “Yeah, buddy. No problem.” He pulls away enough to stick a hand between them. “Partners?”

Cas stares at his hand for a moment before taking it and shaking it once. “Partners.”

 

* * *

 

Castiel decided a long time ago that mornings were stupid. Waking up from a long period of unconsciousness is something he thinks he’ll never get used to. Dean’s presence makes it bearable—sometimes Dean will wait for him to wake up and they can spend a few minutes in bed together. Dean inevitably forces him to get up, and even though Castiel will groan and resist, it’s nice. He likes those mornings.

Apparently, this morning is not one of those mornings. He can tell before he even opens his eyes that Dean is not there, and it gives him no incentive to wake properly. He hates sleep, but he hates waking up from sleep even more. That period where he senses he’s lost time and still has one foot in half-remembered dreams feels too much like when Naomi was manipulating him. It’s better when Dean is there to guide him back to the land of the conscious, with the familiar callouses on his hands.

He waits for a few minutes, but it’s clear that Dean isn’t coming back, and he is _not_ going to fall asleep again and continue to be plagued by vaguely unsettling nightmares. Perhaps he should have insisted on the oral sex. He’s found that he sleeps better after an orgasm (for Dean surely would have returned the favor in some capacity) and Dean is statistically more likely to stay the morning after.

Getting out of bed is almost as difficult as falling asleep, but eventually he manages to slide out from under the covers and put pants on. After Dean fell asleep the night before, Castiel had slipped out to wolf down a few slices of pizza because he was suddenly ravenous, despite feeling too ill to eat before. It was cold, and he ate standing in front of the refrigerator, but it stopped the growling of his stomach. Dean was still asleep when he got back to their room after stopping to brush his teeth, and he thought about waking him. They were both still fully dressed from the rather tempestuous day, but Castiel finally decided it wasn’t worth the possible insomnia and simply took off his jeans and got back into bed.

He hears voices from the war room, but he’s not prepared to enter the conversation before coffee. Coffee helps to stave off the vestiges of sleep; he’s found it incredibly useful in the mornings and during some nights when he just doesn’t want to face the dreams. In his few months of being human again, Castiel has decided this: He hates mornings and sleeping and dreams, but coffee and waking up next to Dean can nearly make up for all of that.

(He also hates urinating still. It’s an unsettling sensation, and he finds it irritating how often human bodies seem to need to do it.)

There’s a freshly brewed pot in the coffee maker, so at least he doesn’t have to wait. He fills a cup and adds a few teaspoons of sugar and drinks it right there in the kitchen before fixing another cup. And only then does he feel adequately prepared to face the others after last night’s argument.

Last night’s—

Oh, _fuck_.

He stops in the kitchen doorway, mortification making his stomach drop and his grip tighten on his mug. He lost control last night. He shouted at Claire, when she had every right to feel angry. He had no right to raise his voice. Not to her. Not after everything he’d done to her already.

He _has_ to fix it. But how?

Steeling himself, Castiel takes a deep breath and walks to the war room. There he finds Sam and Claire sitting at the table again, Sam still in his running gear. Dean is standing at a stack of books, his hair slightly damp, evidently freshly showered. They all look up when he enters, unfortunately. Claire immediately looks away again, picking at a donut on a paper plate.

“Hey, you’re up,” says Dean. He gestures to the pink box on the table. “Got some donuts. Sam ate all the old-fashioneds, but I think there’s still a jelly-filled for you.”

“Thank you,” he says, lowering his eyes to his coffee. He’s not sure he can eat right now. His stomach is churning, but it does that when he’s anxious, too, so he’s not sure it’s hunger. When he looks back up, Claire is watching him. “Claire, may I speak with you?” he asks.

Claire bites her lip. “Yeah. Okay,” she says after a moment, and then she stands up. Castiel follows her out of the war room, avoiding Dean or Sam’s eyes, feeling wholly unprepared. Maybe he should have had another cup of coffee.

Claire leads him to her room and then sits down on the edge of her bed with a sigh. She leans down and rummages through a plastic bag at her feet while Castiel stands awkwardly in her doorway. When she sits back up, she offers him a triangular yellow tube.

“Chocolate?” she says.

Castiel’s shoulders relax minutely, and he nods. “Yes. Thank you.” He walks over to set his mug on her night stand and takes the tube. Claire shifts over, which Castiel has learned is an invitation to sit. At least, he thinks it is. When Claire doesn’t protest, he supposes his interpretation was correct.

The tube is open at one end, and when he tips it, a foil-covered wedge of chocolate slides out. He can tell by the bumps in the foil that it’s meant to be broken into separate pieces, but when he tries to push on a piece, it doesn’t budge. He struggles with it for a while, and the silence between them drags on. Finally, he sighs.

“I’m trying too hard,” he says.

“No kidding, doofus,” says Claire, and she reaches over and takes the bar back. “Here. You push _in_ , not out.” She presses the top of the triangle in toward the rest of the bar and snaps a piece off, and then she places it in his hand. Castiel closes his fingers around it, a swell of gratitude warming his chest, much too large for the tiny gesture.

“Claire,” says Castiel, around a strange lump forming in his throat, “I’m not trying to replace your father. I know I never can. I am aware that I would be a poor substitute. But I…” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. He still remembers Jimmy’s hopes and his prayers, but it never seems like enough. Before Jimmy was gone, Castiel only took the information that seemed pertinent to his cause. It’s not enough to form a full memory of a man in all his complexities. But he knows he loved Claire.

“I wanted to honor his memory,” says Castiel at last, opening his eyes only to raise his gaze to the ceiling. Would it be foolish to pray to Jimmy for guidance? “I know you said that you already have a life, but I wanted—I thought if I could give you the life Jimmy wanted for you, then…”

Claire says nothing, and Castiel swallows heavily. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.

“I’m not—I’m not something for you to _fix_ , Castiel,” says Claire at last, and he meets her eyes. They are filled with fierce determination—and sadness. “You fucked up. You did, but it’s not—I don’t want to be _fixed_. And I don’t want _parents_. I’m eighteen. I’m an _adult_. It’s too fucking late to start trying to give me parents.”

“Claire—”

“No. Listen,” she says firmly. “I’ve lived without parents for years now. I don’t need parents. I don’t _want_ parents. I _want_ to be treated like an _equal_.”

Castiel stares at her bright, shining eyes, and whatever was in his throat before has come back, so he can’t speak.

“Look, you were right,” she continues. “I’ve been through a lot of stupid shit. But I’ve lived with feeling like things are out of my control for years.” She looks down briefly, and when she meets his gaze again, she sighs. “If you really want to make it up to me, stop—stop making decisions for me. Let me live my own life.”

Castiel still can’t speak, so he just nods.

“I’m okay, Castiel,” says Claire, and she gives him a sad smile. “Really.”

He tries to smile back. “Okay,” he says. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

“Me, too,” she says, shrugging. “Sorry.”

The smile feels a little easier this time. “Can we make a deal?” he suggests.

Claire eyes him warily. “What kind of deal?”

“I’ll,” he clears his throat, a little nervously. “I’ll promise to treat you more like an adult,” he offers, “if you promise to finish your senior year of high school.”

Claire wrinkles her nose.

“It’s what your father would want,” Castiel insists. “And I may have only borrowed your vessel for a short time, but if I recall correctly, you liked school.”

Claire scoffs. “I’m not that naïve eleven-year-old kid anymore, Cas,” she says, but she bites her lip. “You’ll treat me like an adult?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ll let me go on hunts with you guys?”

Castiel levels a glare at her.

“Fine, we’ll table that,” she says, and Castiel sighs. “Just stop trying to be my dad. Just… be Castiel.”

He nods. “I can do that. I think,” he adds, uncertainly.

Claire snorts. Castiel waits for a moment for more clauses, and then holds out his hand.

“Deal?” he asks.

Claire raises an eyebrow and then takes his hand. “Deal,” she says.

 

* * *

 

**Epilogue**

 

Dean isn’t late, but when he pulls up to the school, Claire is standing at the bottom of the steps with her arms crossed. He stops at the curb, grinning, and Claire scowls at him before throwing herself into the Impala.

“You suck,” she says, but Dean can barely hear her over AC/DC. He just keeps grinning at her, and she reaches over and turns off the radio.

“Hey, you know the rules,” he says.

“You’re the worst.”

“Should I peel out?” He might be getting a little too much joy out of embarrassing her, but it wouldn’t be a first day of school without a little embarrassment.

“No.”

He does anyway. Claire groans.

Dean waits until they’re out of town so Claire can cool down a little. He remembers first days. Being the new kid. It sucks.

“So how was it?” he asks at last.

“Shitty,” says Claire. Then, after a pause: “But I’m gonna tell Cas it was great.”

“Atta girl,” says Dean, and she scowls at him again, but she’ll be all right. They all survived the interview with the principal and going to the school at the beginning of August to register her for classes and pick up her textbooks. They can survive an entire school year. Millions of kids have before.

They’ll figure it out.

 

 


End file.
